Public Statements

Lifespan Respite Care Act of 2006

Mr. COBURN. Mr. President, I was asked to allow this bill to come up at this late hour in the Congress. This bill is going to pass. The goals of this bill are very worthy. As a practicing physician, and knowing the families whom I take care of and the family members they have, I know the burden that is placed on multitudes of people. When they do the better thing of keeping their loved ones in their own homes, in terms of quality of life, I have no argument with the intent and background of what is trying to be accomplished. But I want to make three points.

One is how this place operates. What we do at the end of the session is we try to run hundreds of bills through that very few people have thoroughly looked at, that drives all sorts of new spending, that does not get the privilege of the debate that the American people deserve on the priorities of how we spend their money. That needs to change. It is a terrible way to govern. It is inappropriate in the way we do it. It has more to do with the rules that we operate the Senate under than anything else. That ought to be changed. There is no question I am known for my desire to try to get our fiscal house in order. For example, this bill is great, but what the American people are never going to ask out of the almost $350 million that this bill authorizes, where is the money going to come from to pay for it? What priority is going to be decreased so that priority can be increased?

We have in the Social Security account a surplus this year. We have a $344 billion deficit. A lot of my friends would say that reflects the fact that we need to have pay-go and increase taxes. But during the last 2 years, I have held 49 hearings in the Federal Financial Subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, where we have identified a pure $100 billion worth of waste, fraud or duplication in this Government, and no one wants to change that. It is easy for us to come out here and spend $300 million on a new program. But it is very hard for us to get together and do the hard work of eliminating the fraud, waste, and duplication.

There are two other programs that have money in them available for this, not the correct way, and not done as good as this bill does it. We haven't done anything in this bill to change those programs to redirect any of that money through. So now we are going to have three programs that have an impact in this area. Representative Ferguson has done a great job of bringing this up. But unless we change the culture of how we operate, we are going to enhance what we call the birth tax. When you are born today in this country, counting the unfunded liabilities for Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, you are born having liabilities of $435,000 on you the day you are born. We are adding a little bit to that. We are adding a little bit more and a little bit more.

Until we get together and say we are going to review this Government and get rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse, we are going to care as much about the person who is born today as we care about those who need some respite care, legitimate rest from the care of parents of those people they love, we will do a great disservice. We are doing a great disservice in this country.

Two weekends ago, I delivered a 9 pound 4 ounce baby to a woman whom I had delivered a baby to before. I had very well controlled her gestational diabetes. She had delivered a 9-pound baby before that.

I thought about the 2 1/2 minutes it took me, from the time I decided I couldn't deliver a baby in a normal way for her. It took me 2 1/2 minutes from the time of that crunch when there was no way to get a baby out, with a heartbeat of 50 beats per minute--which is about 40 percent of what it should be--we have a baby in trouble; it took me about 2 1/2 minutes to go around and get that baby out of that momma. We saved that baby's life.

Now, the corollary is, I had warning signals. I had indications that said things aren't going right. And this body, this Congress, this Government is not paying attention to the warning signals. The baby is going to die. Our country is going to drown in debt.

The processes by which we operate include not paying attention to the waste, fraud, and abuse and not making the hard choices on priorities, not offsetting, not deauthorizing something else that is not working where there are billions of things that are not working, and adding another problem. We are adding to that.

As a Senate, we are not ill-intentioned; we just are not paying attention to the warning signs. We are not paying attention to the fetal monitor of our country and the future for the next generations. It is just as laudable to care as much about the next two or three generations that come down the road as we care for those who need our help today, except this bill doesn't do that.

This bill is going to go by voice vote--and I have allowed it; I will not even vote against it--but I wanted this time to make this statement.

What will follow this bill today is a tragedy. We are going to spend another $17.5 billion on the tax-extender package that is getting ready to come through this place. We are going to pick up the bills mining companies owe and we are going to charge that to the rest of the people in this country. We are going to overspend on lots of things. We are not going to cut doctor's fees--and I am a doctor--but we are not going to pay for it. We are going to pay for it through gimmicks, and we are going to tell everybody that we are doing great things. In fact, we are being dishonest.

There are two cultural problems that have to change: We have to quit authorizing new programs unless we deauthorize other programs, and we have to reach across the aisle and say that we need to review everything we have, and whatever is duplicative, let's get rid of it and save these costs. If one does not work as well, put the money in the other and save the money.

Let's get rid of the fraud. We are paying out $38 billion a year to things we should not be paying for right now, and that is an underestimate because we have only looked at 60 percent of the Government in terms of improper payments. We still have a law that is not being followed by 40 percent of the agencies. They are not reporting their improper payments. We had a Pentagon that paid $6 billion in the last 5 years for contractors for performance bonuses, and they did not come close to reaching the performance basis for the bonus. That is our fault. That is us. We are charged with the responsibility of doing what is necessary.

The final point I wish to make is that if we keep nibbling around the edges on health care, we are going to find ourself in the biggest jam in the world. We have two choices: We are going to either have government-run health care or we are going to control the costs by basically allocating it at end of life and telling people what they cannot have. That is how most other countries do it. Or we will fix health care. We spend 16.3 percent of our GDP on health care, and $2.2 trillion is what we will have spent at the end of this year. That is 16 percent of our GDP. The closest country in the world spends 11 percent of GDP on their health care, and they don't have a government-run health care program.

Fully $1 out of every $3 we spend on health care today does not go to help somebody get well or keep them healthy. Our prevention programs, which is the key to our success in solving our health care problems, are abysmal. They are wasteful. They are not effective. We talk about diabetes, we talk about obesity, but we are inept in any type of consensus as to where we can make a difference in prevention. We have to address that issue, and I believe this is a fix around the edge. We need a comprehensive fix and a look at health care in America. We need to do it knowing the motivation.

Most people are surprised to learn that out of that $2.2 billion we spend on health care every year, $152 million is spent on things that nobody needs except providers to protect themselves from lawsuits. Now, we need a good trial bar. We need to be held accountable. But it has gotten so far out of hand that we are adding to the birth tax.

I beg my colleagues and the American people who are listening to this, let's get our act together. Let's start not just authorizing, let's deauthorize before we authorize. Let's fix health care. Let's do oversight in a way that saves money for the future. If we have eliminated the waste, we have eliminated the fraud, we have eliminated the duplication in this Government, we have to go to the American people and say: Shouldn't we pay a little more taxes now rather than ask for this birth tax?

Remember, the birth tax is over $400,000 per baby right now. Every baby I deliver, the first thing I see is a beautiful young child, and then in the back of my mind I wonder, how are you ever going to get out of this mess we have left you?

I appreciate the concern and the intent of those supporting this bill. This bill has come to the Senate in the wrong way. This bill should have had its authorization offset. This bill does address a very real need, but there are a lot of very real needs out there that we need to do that we cannot do and we cannot fund because we are not doing our job.

Our country is at a crossroad. The fetal monitoring alarm is on. The baby's heartbeat is low. It is time to do what is necessary. The debt burden cannot be swallowed, the unfunded liabilities cannot be handled. It is up to us to change that. Let's lower that birth tax. Let's get rid of that. Let's work together to do the things we can do to lessen that impact on the generations to come.